The Chief Justice: A Novel

CHAPTER V

When the grey morning appeared, he could no longer endure to lie quietly in his bed while his soul was tormented with unrest, he got up, dressed himself, left his room and went out of doors.

It was a damp, cold, horrid autumn morning: the fog clung to the houses and to the uneven pavement of the old town: a heavy, yellow vapor, the smoke of a factory chimney kept sinking down lower and lower. The lonely wanderer met few people, those who recognized him greeted him respectfully, he did not often acknowledge the greeting and when he did, it was unconsciously. Most of them looked after him in utter astonishment; what could have brought the Chief Justice so early out of doors? It seemed at times as if he were looking for something he had lost; he would walk along slowly for a stretch with his looks fixed on the ground, then he would stop and go back the same way. And how broken down, how weary he looked today! – as if he had suddenly become an old man, the people thought.

Freezing with cold, while his pulses beat at fever-speed, he thus wandered for a long while aimlessly through the desolate streets, first this way, then that, until the morning bells of the Cathedral sounded in his ears. He stood still and listened as if he had never heard their mighty sound before; they appeared to vibrate in his heart; his features changed and grew gentler as he listened; a ray of tender longing gleamed in his white face, and, as if drawn by invisible cords, he hurried faster and faster towards the Cathedral. But when he stood before its open door and looked into the dark space, lit only by a dim light, the sanctuary lamp before the high-altar, he hesitated; he shook his head and sighed deeply, and his features again resumed their gloomy, painful look.

He looked up at the Cathedral clock, the hands were pointing to seven. "An hour more," he murmured and went over towards the Court-House. It was a huge, straggling, rectangular building, standing on its own ground. In front were the Chief Justice's residence and the offices; at the back the criminal prison.

He turned towards his own quarters. He had just set his foot on the steps, when a new idea seemed to occur to him. He hesitated. "I must," he hissed between his teeth and he clenched his hands till the nails ran painfully into the flesh; "I must, if only for a minute."

He stepped back into the street, went around the building and up to the door at the back. It was locked; there was a sentinel in front of it. He rang the bell, a warder opened the door and seeing the Chief Justice respectfully pulled off his hat.

"Fetch the Governor," muttered Sendlingen, so indistinctly that the man hardly understood him. But he hurried away and the Governor of the prison appeared. He was visibly much astonished. "Does your Lordship wish to make an inspection?" he asked.

"No, only in one or two particular cases."

"Which are they, my lord?"

But the unhappy man felt that his strength was leaving him. "Later on," he muttered, groping for the handle of the door so as to support himself. "Another time."

The Governor hastened towards him. "Your Lordship is ill again-just as you were yesterday-we are all much concerned! May I accompany you back to your residence? The nearest way is through the prison-yard, if you choose."

He opened a door and they stepped out into the prison-yard; it was separated by a wall from the front building; the only means of communication was an unostentatious little door in the bare, high, slippery wall. It seemed to be seldom used; the Governor was a long time finding the key on his bunch and when at length it opened, the lock and hinges creaked loudly.

"Thank you," said Sendlingen. "I have never observed this means of communication before."

"Your predecessor had it made," answered the Governor, "so that he might inspect the prison without being announced. The key must be in your possession."

"Very likely," answered Sendlingen, and he went back to his residence.

Franz placed his breakfast before him. "There'll be a nice ending to this," he growled. "We are dangerously ill and yet we trapse about the streets in all weathers. Dr. Berger, too, is surprised at our new ways."

"Has he been here already?"

"He was here a few minutes ago, but will be back at eight… But now we have got to drink our tea." He did not budge till the cup had been emptied.

With growing impatience Sendlingen looked at the clock. "He can have nothing fresh to say," he thought. "He must guess my intention and want to hinder me. He will not succeed."

But he did succeed. As he entered, Sendlingen had just taken up his hat and stick.

"You are going to the trial?" began his faithful friend almost roughly, "You must not, Victor, I implore you. I forbid you. What will the judges think if you are too ill to preside, and yet well enough to be present with no apparent object. But the main thing is not to torment yourself, it is unmanly. Do not lessen your strength, you may require it."

He wrested his hat from him and forced him into an armchair.

"My restlessness will kill me if I stay here," muttered Sendlingen.

"You would not be better in there, but worse. I shall come back to you at once; I think, I fear, it will not last long. Don't buoy yourself up with any hopes, Victor. Before a jury, I could get her acquitted, with other judges, at a different time, we might have expected a short term of imprisonment … but now-"

"Death!" Like a shriek the words escaped from his stifled breast.

"But she may not, she will not die!" continued Berger. "I will set my face against it as long as there is breath in my body, nay, I would have done so even if she had not been your daughter. God bless you, Victor."

Berger gathered up his bundle of papers and proceeded along the corridor and up some stairs, until he found himself outside the court where the trial was to take place. Even here a hum of noise reached him, for the court was densely crowded with spectators. As far as he could see by the glimmer of grey morning light that broke its difficult way in by the round windows, it was a well-dressed audience in which ladies preponderated. "Naturally," he muttered contemptuously.

For a few seconds eye-glasses and opera-glasses were directed upon him, to be then again immediately turned on the accused. But her face could not be seen; she was cowering in a state of collapse on her wooden seat, her forehead resting on the ledge of the dock; her left arm was spread out in front of her, her right hung listlessly by her side. Public curiosity had nothing to sate itself on but the shudders that at times convulsed her poor body; one of the long plaits of her coal-black, wavy hair had escaped from beneath the kerchief on her head and hung down low, almost to the ground, touching the muddy boots of the soldier who did duty as sentinel close beside her.

Berger stepped to his place behind her; she did not notice him until he gently touched her icy cold hand. "Be brave, my poor child," he whispered.

She started up in terror. "Ah!" went from every mouth in Court: now at length they could see her face. Berger drew himself up to his full height; his eyes blazed with anger as he stepped between her and the crowd.

"Oh, what crowds of people!" murmured the poor girl. Her cheeks and forehead glowed in a fever-heat of shame: but the colour soon went and her grief-worn face was white again; the look of her eyes was weary and faint. "To think that one should have to suffer so much before dying."

"You will not die!" He spoke slowly, distinctly, as one speaks to a deaf person. "You will live, and after you have satisfied the justice of men, you will begin life over again. And when you do friendship and love will not be wanting to you." While he was saying this, and at the same time looking her full in the face, her resemblance to his friend almost overpowered him. She was like her father in the colour of her hair and eyes, in her mouth and her forehead.

"Love and care are waiting for you!" he continued with growing warmth. "This I can swear. Do you hear? I swear that it is so! As regards the trial, I can only give you this advice: tell, as you have hitherto done, the whole truth. Bear up as well as you can; oppose every lie, every unjust accusation."

She had heard him without stirring, without a sign of agreement or dissent. It was doubtful whether she had understood him. But he had not time to repeat his admonition; the Crown-advocate and the five Judges had entered with Werner at their head. If Berger had hitherto cherished any hope, it must have vanished now; two of the other Judges were among the sternest on the bench; the fourth never listened and then always chimed in with the majority; it was but a slender consolation to Berger when he finally saw the wise and humane Baron Dernegg take his place beside the judges.

Werner opened the proceedings and the deed of accusation was then read out by the Secretary of the Court. Its compiler-a young, fashionably dressed junior Crown-advocate of an old aristocratic family, who had only been in the profession a short time, – listened to the recital of his composition with visible satisfaction. And indeed his representation of the matter was very effective.

According to him the Countess Riesner-Graskowitz was one of the noblest women who ever lived, the Accused one of the most abandoned. A helpless orphan, called by unexampled generosity to fill a post which neither her years nor abilities had fitted her for, she had requited this kindness by entangling the young Count Henry in her wiles in order to force him into a marriage. After he had disentangled himself from these unworthy bonds, and after Victorine Lippert knew her condition, instead of repentantly confiding in her noble protectress, she had exhausted all the arts of crafty dissembling in order not to be found out. And when at length she was, as a most just punishment, suddenly dismissed from the castle, she in cold blood murdered her child so as to be free from the consequences of her fault. In his opinion, the Accused's pretended unconsciousness was a manifest fable, and the crime a premeditated one, as her conduct at the castle sufficiently proved. Her character was not against the assumption, she was plainly corrupted at an early age, being the daughter of a woman of loose character.

"It is a lie! a scandalous lie!"

Like a cry from the deepest recesses of the heart, these words suddenly vibrated through the Court with piercing clearness.

It was the Accused who had spoken. She had listened to the greatest part of the document without a sound, without the slightest change of countenance, as if she were deaf. Only once at the place where it spoke of "manifest fable" she had gently and imperceptibly shaken her head; it was the first intimation Berger had that she was listening and understood the accusation. But now, hardly had the libel on her dead mother been read, when she rose to her feet and uttered those words so suddenly that Berger was not less motionless and dumfounded than the rest.

And then broke forth the hubbub; such an interruption, and in such language, had never before occurred in Court. The spectators had risen and were talking excitedly; the crown-advocate stood there helplessly; even Herr von Werner had to clear his throat repeatedly before he could ejaculate "Silence!"

But the command was superfluous for hardly had the poor girl uttered the words, when she fell back upon her seat, from thence to the ground, and was now lying in a faint on the boards.

She was carried out; it was noticed by many and caused much scandal, that the counsel for the Accused lifted the lifeless body and helped carry it, instead of leaving this to the warders.

The proceedings had to be interrupted. It was another half hour before the Accused appeared in Court again, leaning on Berger's arm, her features set like those of an animated corpse. There was a satirical murmur in the crowd, and Werner, too, reflected whether he should not, there and then, reprove the Counsel for unseemly behaviour. And this determined him to be all the severer in the reprimand which he addressed to the Accused on account of her unheard of impertinence. She should not escape her just punishment, the nature and extent of which he would determine by the opinion of the prison-doctor.

Then the reading of the deed of accusation was finished; the examination began. There was a murmur of eager expectation among the spectators; their curiosity was briefly but abundantly satisfied. To the question whether she pleaded guilty, Victorine Lippert answered quietly but with a steadier voice than one would have supposed her capable of:

"Yes!.. What I know about my deed, I have already told in evidence. I deserve death, I wish to die. It is a matter of indifference to one about to die what men may think of her; God knows the truth. He knows that much, yes most, of what has just been read here, is incorrect. I do not contest it, but one thing I swear in the face of death, and may God have no mercy on me in my last hour if I lie; my mother was noble and good; no mother can ever have been better and no wife more pure. She trusted an unworthy wretch, and he must have been worse than ever any man was, if he could forsake her-but she was good. I implore you, read her testimonials, her letters to me-I beseech you, I conjure you, just a few of these letters. – For myself I have nothing to ask-"

Her voice broke, her strength again seemed to forsake her and she sank down on her seat.

There was a deep silence after she had ended: in her words, in her voice, there must have been something that the hearts of those present could not shut out; even the crown-advocate looked embarrassed. Herr von Werner alone was so resolutely armed to meet the Hydra of the social Revolution, which he was bent on combating in this forlorn creature, as to be above all pity. He would certainly have begun a wearisome examination and have spared the poor creature no single detail, but his daughter was expecting a happy event to-day, and Baron Sendlingen had, notwithstanding, not had sufficient professional consideration to take over the conduct of this trial, and the half hour's faint of the Accused had already unduly prolonged the proceedings-so he determined to cut the matter as short as was compatible with his position. The accused had just again unreservedly repeated her confession; further questions, he explained, would be superfluous.

The examination of the witnesses could be proceeded with at once. This also was quickly got through. There were the peasants, who had found Victorine and her lifeless child on the morrow of the deed, and the prison doctor, none of whom could advance any fresh or material fact.

The only witness of importance to the Accused was the servant-girl who had helped her in her last few months at the castle. The girl had been shortly after dismissed from the Countess' service, and in the preliminary inquiry, she had confirmed all Victorine's statements; if she to-day remained firm to her previous declarations, the accusation of premeditated murder would be severely shaken. To Berger's alarm she now evasively answered that her memory was weak, – she had in the meantime gone into service at Graskowitz again. In spite of this and of the protest of the defence, she was sworn: Berger announced his intention of appealing for a nullification of the trial.

Then the depositions of the Countess and her son were read; the Court had declined to subpœna them. The Countess had not spared time or trouble in depicting the murderess in all her abandonment; but the depositions which Count Henry had made at his embassy, were brief enough: as far as he recollected he had made the girl no promise of marriage, and indeed there was no reason for doing so. Berger demanded, as proof to the contrary, that the letters which had been taken from the Accused and put with the other papers, should he read aloud; this the Court also declined because they did not affect the question of her guilt.

Then followed the speeches for and against. The Crown-Advocate was brief enough: the trial, he contended, had established the correctness of the charge. If ever at all, then in the present case, should the full rigour of the law be enforced. By her protestation that she had received a most careful bringing up from a most excellent mother, she had herself cut from under her feet the only ground for mitigation. All the more energetically and fully did Berger plead for the utmost possible leniency; his knowledge of law, his intellect and his oratorical gifts had perhaps never before been so brilliantly displayed. When he had finished, the people in Court broke out into tumultuous applause.

The Judges retired to consider their verdict. They were not long absent; in twenty minutes they again appeared in Court. Werner pronounced sentence: death by hanging. The qualification of "unanimous" was wanting. Baron Dernegg had been opposed to it.

There was much excitement among the spectators. Berger, although not unprepared for the sentence, could with difficulty calm himself sufficiently to announce that every form of appeal would be resorted to. The Accused had closed her eyes for a moment and her limbs trembled like aspen-leaves, but she was able to rise by herself to follow the warders.

"Thank you," she said pressing Berger's hands. "But the appeal-"

"Will be lodged by me," he said hastily interrupting her. "I shall come and see you about it to-day."

He hurried away down the stairs. But when he got into the long corridor that led to Sendlingen's quarters, he relaxed his pace and at length stood still. "This is a difficult business," he murmured and he stepped to a window, opened it and eagerly drank in the cool autumn air as if to strengthen himself.

When a few minutes after he found himself in Sendlingen's lobby, he met Baron Dernegg coming out of his friend's study.

"Too late!" he thought with alarm. "And he has had to hear it from some one else."

The usually comfortable-looking Judge was much excited. "You are no doubt coming on the same errand, Dr. Berger," he began. "I felt myself in duty bound to let the Chief Justice know about this sentence without delay. The way in which he received it showed me once more what a splendid man he is, the pattern of a Judge, the embodiment of Justice! I assure you, he almost fainted, this-hm! – questionable sentence affected him like a personal misfortune. Please do not excite him any more about it and talk of something else first."

"Certainly," muttered Berger as he walked into the study.

Sendlingen lay back in his arm-chair, both hands pressed to his face. His friend approached him without a word; it was a long, sad silence. "Victor," he said at last, gently touching his shoulder, "we knew it would be so!"

Sendlingen let his hands fall. "And does that comfort me?" he cried wildly. And then he bowed his head still lower. "Tell me all!" he murmured.

Berger then began to narrate everything. One thing only he omitted: how Victorine had spoken of her mother's betrayer. "This very day," he concluded, "I shall lodge a nullity appeal with the Supreme Court. Perhaps it will consider the reasons weighty enough to order a new trial; in any case when it examines the question, it will alter the sentence."

"In any case?" cried Sendlingen bitterly.

"We cannot but expect as much from the sense of justice of our highest Judges. Perhaps the chief witness's suspicious weakness of memory may prove a lucky thing for us. If she had stuck by her former depositions, or if the Court had not put her on her oath, then a simple appeal to the Supreme Court would alone have been possible. Now, the case is more striking and more sensational."

"And therefore all the worse!" interrupted Sendlingen. "Woe to him for whom in these days the voice of the people makes itself heard; to the gentry in Vienna it is worse than the voice of the devil. Besides, just now, according to the opinion of the Minister of Justice, the world is to be rid of child-murder by the offices of the hangman! And this is the first case in educated circles, a much talked of case, – what a magnificent opportunity of striking terror!"

"You take too black a view of the matter, Victor."

"Perhaps! – and therefore an unjust view! But how can a man in my position be just and reasonable. Oh, George, I am so desolate and perplexed! What shall I do; merciful Heaven, what shall I do?"

"First of all-wait!" answered Berger. "The decision of the Supreme Court will be known in a comparatively short time, at latest in two months!"

"Wait-only two months!" Sendlingen wrung his hands. "Though what do I care for myself! But she-two months in the fear of death! To sit thus in a lonely cell without light or air, or consolation, – behind her unutterable misery, before her death-. Oh, she must either go mad or die!"

"I shall often be with her, and Father Rohn, too, I hope. And then, too," he added, half-heartedly, "one or other of the ladies of the Women's Society for Befriending Female Criminals. Certainly these comforters are not worth much."

"They are worth nothing," cried Sendlingen vehemently. "Oh, how they will torture the poor girl with their unctuous virtue and self-satisfied piety! I have to tolerate these tormentors, the Minister of Justice insists on it, but at least they shall not enter this cell, I will not allow it-or at least, only the single one among them who is any good, my old Brigitta-"

"Your housekeeper?" asked Berger, in perplexity and consternation. "That must not be! She might guess the truth. The girl!" he hesitated again-"is like you, very like you Victor-and anyone who sees you so often and knows you so well as Brigitta-"

"What does that matter?" Sendlingen rose. "She is discreet, and if she were not-what does it matter, I repeat. Do you suppose that I never mean to enter that cell?"

"You! Impossible!"

"I shall and I must! I will humour you in everything except in this one thing!"

"But under what pretext? Have you ever visited and repeatedly visited other condemned criminals?"

"What does that matter to me? A father must stand by his child!"

"And will you tell other people so?"

"Not until I am obliged; but then without a moment's hesitation. She, however, must be told at once, in fact this very day."

"You must not do that, Victor. Spare the poor girl this sudden revelation."

"Then prepare her beforehand! But to-morrow it must be!"

Berger was helpless; he knew what Victorine would say to her father if she suddenly encountered him.

"Give her a little more time!" he begged, "Out of pity for her shattered nerves and agitated mind, which will not bear any immediate shock."

This was a request that Sendlingen could not refuse.

"Very well, I will wait," he promised. "But you will not wish to prevent me from seeing her to-morrow. I have in any case to inspect the prison. But I promise you: I will not betray myself and the governor of the jail shall accompany me."

CHAPTER VI

Weighed down by sorrow, Berger proceeded homewards. To the solitary bachelor Sendlingen was more than a friend, he was a dearly loved brother. He was struck to the heart, as by a personal affliction, with compassion for this fate, this terrible fate, so suddenly and destructively breaking in upon a beneficent life, like a desolating flood.